Piano Man
by PuddleJumper9
Summary: It is January 2004 and Rick Castle is sitting at the Old Haunt, procrastinating when a mysterious and intriguing woman walks in. Somewhat AU as I realise Castle probably wasn't still going to the Old Haunt in 2004. This is not a song fic.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Castle of anything related/recognisable. Nor do I own the song Piano Man.**

**A/N: I was listening to Billy Joel's Piano Man, and got thinking about how everyone has a story, and then got thinking about how Castle is great at telling people's stories, or making stories up about people, that, and I was procrastinating and so I wrote this. Please tell me what you think, even if it is a flame. It is not a song fic either. **

_9 January 2004:_

Richard Castle sat in his usual booth with his laptop open in front of him. The usual crowd for a Friday night was here along with a few new faces. The thing he liked about the Old Haunt was that it was quiet, an old style bar, with a piano. It was perfect for people watching, making up their stories as he went. He would occasionally bring Alexis when she was younger, but at age ten, she would rather stay at Paige's house watching movies and painting nails than sitting in an old bar with her father. He was supposed to be writing another couple of chapters of his latest Derrick Storm novel to be on Paula's desk on Monday, but he was procrastinating, writing people's stories in a new document while sipping a whiskey.

He looked around the bar; the man sitting in the far corner was actually a CIA agent, waiting for his contact to appear so he could pass along some vitally important information about a terrorist spotting. The middle aged woman on a stool at the bar was meeting her lover and desperately hoping that her husband would not notice how late she returned home, what she didn't realise was that her husband was also meeting his lover and hoping the same thing. The two men talking in the booth next to him were old friends, that hadn't spoken since they left college and had just happened to meet today in some unusual location and were now catching up on years of stories.

His thoughts were interrupted as the door opened again and a young woman, maybe 25 walked in. She wasn't one of the regulars here; Rick had never seen her before. She scanned the room before heading to the bar and sitting on a stool, she didn't order a drink immediately, she just sat there. The thing that had struck Rick when he had seen her was that although she looked young she seemed to have the world on her shoulders and her eyes were filled with such sorrow and heartbreak.

Maybe she was a lawyer and had just lost the case that would make her career, he thought as she rested her head in her hand. Her clothes screamed sophistication but he shook his head, lawyer just didn't seem to fit. The barman kept shooting her puzzled looks before walking over to her.

"Sorry, miss, but are you going to order a drink? This is a bar."

She looked up, startled, as if she hadn't thought anyone would try talking to her before realising who it was. She offered the barman a sad smile.

"Sorry, I'll have a whiskey please," she spoke so quietly Rick could barely make out what she said, and then she seemed to zone out again, playing with something around her neck that he couldn't see.

He opened up a new document on his laptop and started outlining the things he knew about her. He would have gone over and started up a conversation with her, but her body language screamed 'leave me alone'.

She was well dressed, so most likely well off. She also had an air of authority about her, so even though she was young she was probably reasonably high up in the chain off command in her field or was set to be at some stage. She was had sad green eyes that had seemed to bore into his soul as she had looked around the room earlier, but the green was rimmed with red. She had been crying recently too. Her hair was long, it reached to her shoulder blades and in the reddish light of the bar looked somewhat chestnut coloured.

She reached for the whisky that had been placed in front of her a few moments ago, still playing with whatever was on the necklace and took a small sip, grimacing slightly as it burned her throat. Rick mimicked her action, minus the grimace, he'd been drinking here long enough to be a bit more used to the burn that came with this particular brand of whisky. When he looked up at the mystery woman she was taking the necklace off, and he thought he saw a ring attached to it. Maybe she had just been proposed to and she wasn't sure how to tell he man that she didn't actually love him, or maybe her fiancée had just passed away and she just wanted to go somewhere new to escape the sympathetic looks and haunting memories that never ceased to invade her mind.

He caught a flash of metal on her hip as she shifted on the stool. Definitely not a lawyer then, a cop, she wasn't old enough to have made detective yet. Perhaps she had been involved in a forbidden office romance, secretly engaged until tragedy had struck and her lover was killed in the line of duty, right in front of her. And she'd had to watch as he had bled out in front of her, whispering one last 'I love you' in her ear before oblivion claimed him.

He had been typing all of the ides as he thought them: all of these ideas that he could potentially use in his novels; this woman was an amazing inspiration, she had hauntingly good looks and was a mystery to him with such sadness about her.

The woman's phone was going off, not obnoxiously loud, in fact most of the other patrons didn't even notice but she looked rather embarrassed regardless. Rick knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but his curiosity got the better of him as she checked the caller ID.

"Hi Dad, how are you?" She nodded, listening to her father's reply. "I'm okay I suppose; I had a long day at work today, so it kept me busy. We finished a case so we had heaps of paperwork; I just got off about an hour ago," she sighed. "I'll come around tomorrow, okay. I have the weekend off, just pleas say you'll be sober when I get there Dad. I can't keep cleaning you up; you're supposed to be the parent, not me."

She had her head cradled in one hand as she talked, and Rick could see tears beginning to well up in her eyes which she swiped away furiously.

"Dad, you need help, this isn't how mom would want you to be, and it certainly isn't helping anyone, you're not fine. I'll see you tomorrow, but if you're not sober, don't expect me to stay and clean up after you again. It's been five years; I got help, why can't you."

The tears were making their way down her face by now and her voice had been getting quieter as she hissed the last few sentences into the phone, aware that if she raised her voice she would get an audience. The barman silently left a couple of napkins by the barely touched whiskey as the woman bid her father goodbye and hung up. She then shot the whiskey a withering glare as if it was to fault for her father's alcoholism and Rick wouldn't have been surprised if ice cubes had formed in it from the coldness of her glare. She then used the napkins to remove all traces of the tears from her face, and then laid a couple of bills next to her drink before leaving as silently as she had come in.


End file.
